mintCast 183 – Python, Twitter, and Pi

News:

Low-end laptops:The rise of the Chromebook– Some people are still in denial about the rise of the Linux operating system with the Chrome Web browser interface, Chrome OS, and its hardware: the Chromebooks. The experts say, however, it’s the one segment of the PC market that’s growing while everything else shrinks. (zdnet.com)

Slackware Linux 14.1 – Yes, it is that time again! After well over a year of planning, development, and testing, the Slackware Linux Project is proud to announce the latest stable release of the longest running distribution of the Linux operating system. (distrowatch.com) (slackware.com)

Canonical “abused trademark law” to target a site critical of Ubuntu privacy – “Fix Ubuntu” site accused of trademark violation, asked to change domain name. According to Micah Lee, Canonical sent him an e-mail this morning asking him to stop using the Ubuntu logo and also to stop using the word “Ubuntu” in his domain name. Lee reprinted the entire e-mail in a blog post. (arstechnica.com) (muktware.com) (markshuttleworth.com) (softpedia.com)

The future of Linux: Evolving everywhere – Mark Shuttleworth’s recent closure of Ubuntu Linux bug No. 1 (“Microsoft has a majority market share”) placed a meaningful, if somewhat controversial, exclamation point on how far Linux has come since Linus Torvalds rolled out the first version of the OS in 1991 as a pet project. But where from here? (itworld.com)

Linux Voice – A new Free Software and Linux magazine that gives profits back to the community – from an all-star team of ace Linux journalists. Linux Lifestyle originally shared: OK folks here it is. We’re launching a crowd funding campaign to create a new Linux magazine that puts the community first. That means we’ll donate half of our profits back to the community. There’s loads more details on the campaign page. (linuxvoice.com) (indiegogo.com)

Humble Store Opens with 24-Hour Debut Sale – First there was the Humble Bundle, and it was good. Then came the Humble Weekly Sale, and it was pretty cool too. Now it’s time for the next step in the Humble evolution: The Humble Store, where games go on sale and proceeds go to charity. (escapistmagazine.com) (humblebundle.com)

Python (python.org) is a programming language that lets you work more quickly and integrate your systems more effectively. You can learn to use Python and see almost immediate gains in productivity and lower maintenance costs.
Twitter: Developer (dev.twitter.com); Manage Apps (dev.twitter.com/apps); Create a new App (dev.twitter.com/apps/new)
NLTK (nltk.org) is a leading platform for building Python programs to work with human language data.
WordNet® (wordnet.princeton.edu) is a large lexical database of English. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are grouped into sets of cognitive synonyms (synsets), each expressing a distinct concept.
@braynebuddy is where the results will eventually appear, and you can follow the development process on Rob’s webwords blog.

Unix: The Art of Being Lazy – One of the most endearing qualities of Unix devotees is how determined they are to be as efficient as possible. Why type three characters if you can do the same thing with two? And one of the best ways to cut down keystrokes is to turn common commands into aliases. (itworld.com)

Podcast Announcements:

Watch for “Event” announcements in the mintCast Community on Google+ to find out when we’re recording!
Mumble Server: The LinuxBasix community funded the mumble server we currently use to live stream and record mintCast. Since they have segmented a bit, jneuster has funded it privately. While ~$5 runs the server for a month, it would be nice if it was community funded. (openspeak.cc)
Texas Linux Fest 2014 has been scheduled. We are going to be at the Austin Convention Center June 13th and 14th! This year we are planning to do two full days of expo floor in a much larger venue! We are already accepting registration for this year’s event! We are also starting the call for papers immediately to get as many exciting talks as we can! If you would like to submit a talk, please check here for more info: http://texaslinuxfest.org.